<-- If you like this, share it with others here. |
Who Am I?
Quick Family History
I’m a native Chattanoogan born in
1970. Aside from a few months when I was a baby in Shreveport, LA, I’ve
lived in Chattanooga my whole life. I went to school there, worked there,
met my wife there, and am raising my two children there.
[Update 2005-08-27] I've since moved
myself and the family to Knoxville. Big change for all of us. I got a new job in
Oak Ridge, TN – Right next to the big Y-12 Nuclear weapons plant.
My ancestors and great, great
grandparents, the O’Quinn’s, arrived in America from Ireland during the great
potato famine. Because of the prejudices against Irish immigrants at the
time, they dropped the “O” from O’Quinn and changed their name to “Quinn” to
make their name sound less Irish.
My great Grandfather was a coal miner
in Oklahoma where he and my great grandmother gave birth to my Grandfather,
Miles Thomas Quinn in 1911. When Miles was a child, they moved to
Whiteside Tennessee, driving in a horse and buggy across people’s back yards,
spending nights with farm families along the way. My great Grandfather
eventually opened a produce business and apparently did very well. They
had regular truck deliveries to and from Florida. My Grandfather, Miles
and his 11 brothers all drove trucks for the family business. One of the
brothers was killed in a tragic accident while driving his truck.
When WWII came around, several of the
brothers were drafted into the military. One of them was a pilot and was
shot down over Germany, was captured, and became a prisoner of war.
Fortunately, he survived.
While working for the produce company,
Miles met his future bride to be, Annie Beatrice Skeff. Annie’s great
Grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee Indian. Annie’s mother (my Great
Grandmother, whom I knew) had visible Cherokee facial features. She died
in 1985. Annie and Miles fell in love and got married. Annie, Miles
and his brothers and familes moved to Chattanooga, TN where they opened a
business together making custom kitchen cabinetry and building houses.
Their business was called QuinCo Kitchens. QuinCo was known throughout the
area as providing the highest quality workmanship available. Many homes,
to this day, still have the original QuinCo Kitchens cabinetry in them.
Most of the old timers around here still know the name.
Miles and Annie had two children,
Barbara, my Aunt, and Jimmy, my Father. Jimmy drove a truck for the family
business (driving it too close under a train bridge and ripping the top off
once). Miles wanted his son to be the first in the Quinn Family to get a
formal education. With the success of QuinCo, he was able to send both of
his children thru college. Jimmy decided to study medicine and went into
Radiology. Once he got out and was successful, he repaid Miles and Annie
every penny they spent on his education.
Unfortunately, Miles’ accountant had
been stealing from him all along. By the time he realized it, the
accountant had damaged his finances enough that Miles and his brothers had to
sell the business (after firing the accountant, of course). The business
still exists to this day in the same shop as when it was run by the original
Quinn brothers. The current owners are also named Quinn, but have no
relation to us.
Miles developed cancer in the 60’s and
got treatment in St. Louis. It was one of his most popular stories that he
used to tell. He believed that God himself told him that he would not die
from cancer. He believed that until the day he died. He had cancer
when he died (both skin cancer and prostate cancer), and indeed, he did not die
from cancer. He died from other complications, by my side while I was
holding his hand in October of 1992. He died the way he wanted to; at
home, surrounded by his family. He had told me that he was ready and had
made his peace with God. He had no regrets.
While in school, Jimmy, a Lambda Chi
fraternity brother, met his wife, Patsy Farmer, a Chi-Omega sorority sister.
They got married, and then Jim joined the air force and was stationed in
Shreveport, LA. He had 4 children; 3 girls and one boy (me). When he
completed his duty in the air force, he and family moved back to Chattanooga,
TN.
Laurie, the youngest of the four, now
runs her own business in Florida, interpreting dreams. You can visit her
site at www.thedreamzone.com. She's
appeared on several national television shows (The View, The Today show with
Dianne Sawyer, and most recently as of this writing, on CNN's Cooper Anderson
360).
Deborah, the 2nd oldest,
teaches in Alabama with her husband, her son from her first mariage, and her
husband's 2 children from his first mariage.
Donna, the oldest, also lives in
Knoxville, has taken up our Irish heritige and has created several lines of
Celtic Jewelry and is becoming successful in that.
Jim has started several businesses
throughout the years, including his own medical practice (partnered with several other
doctors) and opened several High-end gift stores located in Phoenix and Beverly
Hills. He brought in the first MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine
into Chattanooga in 1984. That particular machine was featured on one of
GE’s nationally broadcast commercials and can still be seen to this day.
My History
I grew up with my parents and three
sisters (2 older and one younger). Being the only boy made it especially
difficult. Because of my Father’s success, we grew up in a nice house in a
nice neighborhood. We all had many friends in our neighborhood in the
70’s. Our community was pretty close.
I attended a Baptist nursery school
for 3 years (though, we're not Baptist). One of my most memorable moments there was playing the lead
role in the school play. I was George Washington. I still have the
hat and wig! Later, my sisters and I attended a private school.
Beginnings of my interests in computers
Like most young boys, I was interested
in science fiction and the space program. This led to a genuine interest
in the sciences, especially astronomy, physics, and electronics. I studied
astronomy and physics, while keeping an interest in electronics, but never
studied electronics as a young boy. I did, however, disassemble many of
the family electronics devices, like motorized toys, radios, and tape recorders
to figure out how they worked. We got one of the very first home console
game systems (no, I never disassembled that!). It was archaic compared to
today’s standards. It had about 15 variations of pong. I believe we
got it around 1976. Christmas of 1978 or ’79 introduced us to the first
Atari home game console system. We all hated it because the joysticks kept
breaking. “Tank” wasn’t that fun of a game either. We exchanged it
for a Magnavox Odyssey 2000… a MUCH better system, yet unknown to most
people.
Beginnings of Video interests
In 1976 we got the first home VCR
system (contrary to popular belief, it was VHS, not Beta!). A year
later, we got the first home video camera. It was a JVC. I’ve still
got it. It weighs a ton and needed extra spot lights in the room to avoid
shooting too dark of an image while indoors. It had a ¾” thick cable from
the camera to a secondary unit that also contained the power supply. From
there, the video and audio RCA cables connected it to the VCR. It was not
portable. I got interested in video at that time and have been playing
around with video editing in one form or another ever since. Today, I’m
100% digital (have been since 1997). Things have really improved!
Today I’m fully into digital video editing.
Video Games and first contact with a computer
The early 80’s brought us arcade games
and Pac-Man was at the top. I admit it, I was a Pac-Maniac and everyone
knew it! In the summer of 1982, when I was 12 years old, because of my
fascination with science, electronics, and video games, my Mother signed me up
for a week long computer course at the local University (It was for 12 year
olds). In 1982, it was unusual for kids to be taking computer classes.
The local NBC affiliate came out and did a story on us. I was so excited
because I got to see myself on TV for the first time. It’s a big deal when
you’re 12 years old! I got my first taste of computers (Apple ][+, Atari
400 & 800, TRS-80’s and Coco’s) and was hooked. From that point forward, I
never worried about what I’d be doing for a living. I talked my Father
into buying me a computer the next year. It was a Franklin Ace 1000 (an
Apple ][ clone). I spent hours and hours on that thing day in and day out,
staying up till the wee hours of the morning hacking it and learning everything
I possibly could. I learned about programming in BASIC, programming in
Assembly, shifting bits, manipulating bits and pixels and becoming most
fascinated with computer graphics and animation. My parents thought it
would be fad and I’d eventually lose interest in it. To this day, 22 years
later, I’m still at it! Unfortunately, my school work suffered because I
spent the time I should have been doing my homework and studying on the computer
instead.
…And it all comes together…
The next year, I took a computer
course at school. It was BASIC on TRS-80 model III’s. It was a
self-paced course. I surprised myself, and my teacher, by screaming thru
the entire course before the next fastest student was half way thru… most were
only about ¼ of the way thru. It was all completely natural to me. I
loved it! I cracked my first copy-protected game at 13 years old. It
was MasterType for the Apple //. I found that I could open the drive door
while booting from it, get a command line, then copy the modified DOS from
regular RAM to auxiliary RAM, switch floppies to a regular Apple DOS 3.3 boot
floppy, and switch between the two DOS’s programmatically to read files from the
copy protected disk into memory, switch DOS, and write them to a regular disk.
Getting in deep
I bought the books, “Beneath Apple
DOS” and “Machine Language for the Apple ][“ and learned about the sector format
of disks, entry points into Apple DOS, read the manual that came with my RANA
Systems 40 track floppy drive and learned how to control the stepper motor to
move the drive arm from track to track with assembly language, turn on bit
reading or writing and was able to write my own track formatting and reading
code. That was the most fascinating work I’ve ever done on computers.
Of everything I’ve learned about computers to now, I think those days gave me
the most important knowledge. Everything else builds from that.
Getting started in Graphics
I become known at school as the local
computer geek (uh, I mean expert!). I was also known as the schools best
artist. I had a knack for drawing, so computer graphics was a natural
interest of mine. Of course, I couldn’t do much with the schools TRS-80
model III’s “Hi-Res” (127x80 resolution) graphics!
On my Franklin, I learned how to
control the graphics modes from machine code and started writing my own version
of the classic arcade game, “Defender”. I never finished it, but got the
joystick control routines done and the animation of the main ship, controlled by
the joystick, shooting rockets, and alien ships flying at me. That’s about
where I left it.
Camp
The summer of 1984, I attended my
first (and only) camp. It was in Bat Cave, North Caroline. It was a
computer camp. I was disappointed that there was nothing for me to learn
there. They were teaching the kids the basics of the basics of
programming. Our main project was to make a simple Hang-Man game on Apple
//’s in low-res graphics. So, I added multiple animation routines and such
in assembly language to spiff it up. My partner got mad and quit as my
partner because I was leaving him behind. My “teachers” were college kids
that only knew enough to teach the Hang-Man game. I kind of stayed in my
own little corner during that class, but everyone got along with me.
High School
In 1984, I started High School at the
local Catholic high school (even though we’re not Catholic). Of course, I
elected for the computer courses. Fortunately, they were using Apple //’s,
so I was right at home. They wouldn’t let me take the advanced course
(groan), so here I go starting at point 0 again. Fortunately, this time,
the other students, and most importantly, the teacher, recognized my abilities
and I was allowed to help teach the class. One of the seniors was having
me do his homework for him.
More Graphics
Around 1985, the first ComputerEyes
video digitizer came out (Today, people call them “video capture cards”).
I talked my Father into getting it for me. It plugged into the joystick
port of my Franklin. It had a single RCA port on the back (for video
input) and a “squelch” knob on the front. The RCA port was an NTCS video
input port. I “inherited” the old JVC video camera (from 1977) and hooked
it up to my ComputerEyes. The subject in the video had to sit still for 6
full seconds for the device to acquire one image, and it was a 1-bit image at
that, but I loved it! It was fascinating. I learned how to read in
the bits programmatically from assembly language by reading the hardware IO
addresses. I decided to plug in an audio source and play with the squelch.
It appeared that I was getting some kind of data in. I decided to access
the hardware address that flips the PC speaker based on the values I read in
from the input. I had created an audio digitizer! It was a 1-bit
digitizer, but nonetheless, it was fascinating! I would plug in the local
rock station, play the audio live as well as copy the bits to RAM and save them
to disk later, and load them back in and play them back. I had created a
sound digitizer out of a video digitizer! And I guess what you could call a
crude media player.
Later, I took still shots of my head
in slightly different positions, took each frame and displayed them rapidly on
the screen. I had created my first video media player and I was using
stop-frame animation techniques just to see me nodding my own head on the 1-bit
graphics display. Pretty low tech by today’s standards, but I was awed
anyway.
Upgrading, Finally!
In 1987, I convinced my Father to buy
me an Apple ][GS. It was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
“Super-hi-res graphics” which amounted to 320x200 resolution with a video
hardware color lookup table of 16 colors out of a palette of 4,096 colors.
I thought I was in computer graphics heaven! And it was so fast too!
A whopping 2.75Mhz and twice as much RAM as my Franklin at 256KB. The
sound was superb. It had an Ensoniq sound chip… the same one used in
popular high-end music synthesizers. It had 16 voices, or if you really
knew what you were doing, 32 simultaneous voices. And they were all 8-bit
to boot. I got a “Sonic Blaster” made by Applied Engineering. This
was an audio digitizer. I eventually got an AST Research video digitizer.
It digitized video “live” (AST’s term). Live wasn’t real time video
digitization, but it was close. It would digitize up to 15 frames a
second. Of course, it wouldn’t record video, it would just display it
“live” on the monitor (digitized, of course). I could capture still shots
with it. I had a recent college basketball game recorded on an old beta
VCR (circa 1982 or so). I played back a segment of my favorite player
making a lay-up, frame by frame, recording each frame as a separate image file.
I then wrote an assembly language program to load all the images (about 30 or
so) into RAM and display them rapidly in succession. I had my 2nd
video software player. This time, the video was much better. It was
4-bit grey-scale (16 shades of gray).
Audio
I learned how to call the Apple
Toolbox libraries for creating windows in the GUI, menu bars, dialog boxes, etc…
from Assembly language and put all of my skills together to write my very first
GUI application (completely in Assembly). This application would digitize
an 8-bit audio signal from the SonicBlaster, compress the audio with my own
compression algorithm, and save it to disk. I had also written
decompression routines. It worked great! I was getting between 10:1
and 20:1 compression with little to no noticeable loss of audio quality. I
then added your basic audio editing features to the application like audio
reverse, amplify, pacify, fade in, fade out, and my own echo routines.
That was loads of fun.
College
In 1988 High school was over and it
was time for college. I had a rough time in my prior 12 years of school
(well, the 1st 8 years... High school was awesome!).
Being a computer geek didn’t get you to the top of the popularity charts in
school in the 1980’s. In college, obviously, I majored in Computer
Science. I chose the path with Scientific Applications. I minored in
Physics. Unfortunately, there was no placement exam for the computer path.
Here I go again starting at ground zero (groan, again).
My Desktop Publishing professor, who
thought of me as a star student, recommended me for a job on campus. I got
the job in December 1989 in the computer center’s faculty computer lab helping
the professor’s on Macs and PCs. I also did a large amount of programming,
making tutorial training software for the Nursing school and Statistics
department. I worked there for 4 years. I got my first experience
with Windows and Macs there as well as got pretty deep into computer graphics
(real graphics this time). We had 24 bit graphics and high resolution
(640x480, at the time it was considered high). I made slide show
presentations for faculty and 3D animations using a Mac IIfx and StrataVision
3D… still the best 3D software, even to this day. I became absolutely
fascinated with 3D graphics. I went around my bedroom, measuring every detail
and entered the data into the 3D program and made a QuickTime fly through 3D
animation of my own room. The video was 320x200 resolution, 24bit color,
15 frames per second, no anti-aliasing. It took a week to render on a Mac
IIvx. But I was still enthralled. Here’s a still shot 640x480 ray
tracing rendering I made [Click Here for Image]. It took about an hour to render
this image.
C
I had another part time job at a local
company making computer graphics for touch-screen computers in tourist
attractions around the entire state of TN. Frequently, I’d drive around
the state and upgrade the adds in the computers, get their hit counts, and
service the computers and printers. My boss recommended programming in C
for career opportunities. I was intrigued and picked up the floppy version
of Microsoft Quick C at the local Software Etc. (back when they were a real
software store, not a game store.)
I loved it! I ran it on my PC Transporter card in my Apple ][GS.
This device was an IBM clone emulator on a card. It allowed me to run MS
DOS applications. Using that, I learned as much as I could about C.
I eventually bought my first IBM clone. It was a 386SX, 25Mhz, with 4MB
RAM, and a 120MB hard drive. That was a big step for me because I was a
die-hard Apple fan. Unfortunately, the way Apple computer abandoned its
Apple // base caused many of us to jump ship. Of course, I installed my
copy of QuickC on it and went to town. I wrote my own GUI library for
MS-DOS. It worked great and allowed me to write MS-DOS programs with menu
bars, windows, dialog boxes, push buttons, check boxes, radio buttons, radio
groups, text boxes, labels, and group boxes. It was my proudest
achievement up to that point. I had even created events with function
pointers and didn’t know it at the time, but had implemented what amounts to
polymorphism and inheritance. I was on the road to object oriented
programming and didn’t realize it. You can download a
sample application here. Download the
encrypted and signed version here. Use my PGP public
key for the signed version. The
display problems are a result of bugs in the Microsoft QuickC graphics library.
C++
Around 1990 or 1991, A friend of mine
from school had already started his own business. He had a reseller
license and I purchased the full version of Microsoft C++ 7.0 thru him… the
first Microsoft compiler with the Windows SDK (Software Development Kit) and it
was the last Microsoft DOS hosted compiler. I read the C++ tutorial book
(still have it) that came with it and realized that this would be perfect for my
GUI library, so I rewrote the library in C++. I never wrote any
applications with the library, other than an example to show it off. You
can download the source code to the sample application, the EXE and the library
and source here, if I can find it, that is.
I joined the local Apple // user’s
group and got connected with GS+ magazine. I became the graphics editor
and had my own recurring column entitled, “Brush with Greatness” where I gave
tips and techniques on doing computer graphics on an Apple ][GS. At the
same time I was still working in the faculty lab and thru a friend there, got
connected with Apple Computer corporate and became the University Apple Computer
sales representative.
Professional Career Begins
College was frustrating for me because
I felt like I was wasting my time on so much beginner stuff again. I was
definitely not getting my money’s worth. A friend of mine, a grad student,
whom I’d met at my job, told me I already knew more than most graduates he knew.
While this was a nice compliment, it was frustrating knowing that there was
little, if anything for me to get out of college.
Another friend of mine, whom I’d met
in class, the one I purchased MS C++ 7.0 thru, had already started his own
business and was making good money. He offered me a job making much more
than I was making in my part time campus jobs. I took the offer. We
worked side by side for 4 years. Together, we re-wrote my original Apple
][GS audio program, but this time for Windows 3.1. We used Microsoft
Visual C++ 1.5. This time, I wrote a routine that I had actually
originally thought of back in high school. It was a technique I had
labeled, “Anti-Sound”. Here’s how it worked: Digitize an audio
source. Flip the sound wave. Play the original in the left speaker
and the flipped version in the right speaker. With the right kind of
speakers (non externally powered), one speaker cancels out the other! We
tried it and it actually worked! Here’s what we did: Digitize a
sound. Apply the “Anti-Sound” filter to it. Play the sound back with
the right speaker turned all the way down. You hear the normal sound
coming out of the left speaker. Conversely, you could turn down the left
speaker, turn up the right speaker, and hear the normal sound. Now, with
the right speaker up, slowly turn up the volume on the left speaker. The
actual volume goes DOWN! As the sound is played out of the left speaker
and as the left speaker is playing its version of the sound louder, it actually
acoustically cancels out the sound from the right speaker! It was really
weird and it really worked!
We wrote a bunch of software from
real-time bar-code scanning RF inventory control, to production line statistics,
to lab testing software, to national order entry software. We had loads of
fun, but it was hard work at times. We went thru multiple languages such
as C, C++, Assembly, Clipper, Paradox for Windows, FoxPro for DOS, FoxPro for
Windows, Visual FoxPro, Delphi 1.0 and Delphi 2.0, and HTML. I even did a
fair amount of Graphics with CorelDraw, and hosted some training. I
probably built about 200 PCs and maintained just as many more. There were
times when I’d even have a mini-assembly line going building 10 PCs at a time.
We designed, ordered, built and installed networks and PCs for Fortune 500
corporations down to fixing people’s home PCs. We did everything. We had
tons of fun too. The local business residents in our business incubator knew us
as “Bevis & Butthead”.
Marriage!
During that period, I met the girl
that would eventually become my wife. We got married in January of 1995.
In 1997, a mutual friend of ours lured
me over to his company where I worked on making CD-ROM tutorial simulations of
work place environments, bug tracking software and QA software.
Kids!
While working on the CD-ROM
simulations, we had our first born baby. It was a girl! Things were
changing and I had more mouths to feed. It necessitated making more money,
so another friend of mine lured me over to a big insurance company that had an
opening for a C programmer in June of 1998. I took the job and got a
modest boost to my income and was fairly comfortable. Along comes tax
break #2. Congratulations! It’s a boy! Oh boy! Another
mouth to feed! A friend of mine that I had met just before college in the
FidoNet days (and was in class with in college) was also working for the same
company. He lured me over to the imaging department for a different kind
of job. It was all PC based with a touch of computer graphics… and C++ was
sanctioned for use there. Oh, and it paid significantly more! So,
naturally, I took it in July of 2000. One month earlier, our company
merged with our biggest competitor. Unfortunately, the financial people from the
other company lied to our financial people about the amount of reserves they had
on hand for each policy. They were not holding nearly what the law required. By
the time our people found out, it was too late to pull out. Our CEO fired all of
the financial people on the other side, as well as firing the CEO of the bigger
company we merged with. With our company's finances much lower than what our
people had though, they had to start cutting back. It finally hit me on the 2nd
or 3rd round of layoffs... on my birthday in 2003. Happy Birthday!
You're out of a job! So, I got a higher paying job a week later in Dalton, GA. I
had already been looking because I was no longer satisfied at the insurance
company. I highly recommend getting laid off. You get a big check and a letter
of good standing. Getting a higher paying job helps too! It turns out my boss as
the new job was a micro manager at the quantum level and absolutely relentless
on everything. Lesson learned: Don't take the first offer that comes your way!
Ask around about the place and other people that have worked with the people you
will be working with! That gets me up to date: I found a MUCH better job with
significantly more pay in Oak Ridge, so we packed up the bags and moved to
beverly.. uh, West Knoxville.
I’ve had a good deal of experience
with multiple technologies in the two jobs within the company at the insurance
company. I’ve added to my experience: Cobol, MVS, JCL, DB2, OS/2, VB6, MS SQL
Server, Imaging systems, COM, MTS, embedded SQL, DB2 CLI, .NET, C#, ADO,
ADO.NET, ASP, ASP.NET, Visual Studio 6.0, Visual Studio .NET, testing
procedures, certification procedures, learning the corporate politics (the worst
part of any job). I had little
useful computer experience at the job in Dalton, but hard lessons on how to deal
with overbearing managers. I did gain experience in VB.NET, DB2 stored
procedures, & a little bit of AS/400 experience. I'm trying to dig out the
AS/400 experience with a fork and a brillo pad from my brain though!
Currently
I've been neck deep in .NET for about 7 years now. I’ve been
using it at work and at home
making libraries, ASP.NET web applications, Windows services, XML Web Services,
GUI apps, etc… I’ve taken several training courses on various subjects in .NET
and am studying for my MCSD for .NET. About a year ago (late 2008), I
started getting into XBox 360 game development. I attended a session on
Microsoft's robotic library and now my next goal is to get into robotics...
something I've been wanting to do since I was kid.
My Future
[Written on 4/19/2003] For me, it
looks like .NET is going to be a big part of my future. For the first
time, Microsoft has finally made a full, comprehensive technology, that seems to
make sense (unusual for Microsoft!) and that I can finally say is really worth
using. I guess hiring the guy from Borland that created Delphi and letting
him create C# and a good chunk of designing the .NET technology probably wasn’t
a bad move for Microsoft (nor for Andres).
Update: .NET has most
definitely been a part of my then future and now present and past. Since I wrote
that, I've worked at 2 other companies doing .NET. I'm currently (as of
8/27/2005) working with VB.NET, ASP.NET, & a lot of Classic ASP (moving to more
.NET work).
Update: As of 7/26/2009, I'm doing nearly 100% .NET development.
|